The Foghorn Stringband: Thursday, Sept. 27

The old times, they are a-changin’.

[OLD-TIME PARTY MUSIC] It’s been well over a decade since
mandolinist Caleb Klauder and fiddle player Sammy Lind first met with
friends at the Northeast Portland pub the Moon and Sixpence to
kick-start a Sunday-evening residency of hell-for-leather old-time
music. No matter what changes have overtaken the troupe, nor how far
afield its tours may veer, the Foghorn Stringband still cherishes its
home base.

“You come back, you play for six hours just for the hell of it,” Klauder says. “I feel like that gig is our lifeblood.”

Outshine the Sun,
the seventh album to be recorded under the Foghorn
imprimatur—self-released, like all of its releases, save a mid-aughts
dalliance with Nettwerk ’midst the label’s Avril Lavigne/Sarah McLachlan
heyday—reclaims the Stringband title following outings as Duo and Trio.
During the past few years’ constant touring, Klauder and Lind chanced
upon Quebecois bassist Nadine Landry and Bellingham, Wash., guitarist
Reeb Willms as perfectly appointed means to flesh out the group’s sound
and sweeten the harmonies. “What we do hasn’t changed, it’s just
expanded,” Klauder says, “and we have some new songs in the repertoire.”

While the majority of Outshine the Sun comprises
authentic old-time numbers, there are relatively eclectic selections—a
Cajun waltz here, a cover of ’70s bluegrass pioneer Hazel Dickens
there—that would once have been anathema to the formerly orthodox
traditionalists.

“It was a cool
thing,” Klauder says. “We had a kind of niche, and it gave us a
super-strong identity as this hardcore old-time band. Some people in the
band were really adamant about the traditional stuff, but we kind of
felt cornered after a while.”

From the beginning,
the Stringband has been a live favorite around the country and, indeed,
the world: In 2005, the group performed at the Rainforest World Music
Festival in Malaysia, pickin’ to thousands in the jungles of Borneo.
Later this year, the troupe joins festivals in Canada, Louisiana and
Scotland before a slight hiatus when Klauder and Willms tour Germany and
Denmark and Lind and Landry head off to Australia.

“We like the fast
ones,” Klauder says of the band’s live sets. “I think we’re the only
old-time band that plays like a bluegrass band: more exciting, more to
the audience.”